August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again! October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”﻿September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.htmlSeptember 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnessesSeptember 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.September 14, 2017, 04:31:26 am Christian40 says: i have thought that i'm reaping from past sins then my life has been impacted in ways from having non believers in my ancestry.September 11, 2017, 06:59:33 am Psalm 51:17 says: The law of reaping and sowing. It's amazing how God's mercy and longsuffering has hovered over America so long. (ie, the infrastructure is very bad here b/c for many years, they were grossly underspent on. 1st Tim 6:10, the god of materialism has its roots firmly in the West) And remember once upon a time ago when shacking up b/w straight couples drew shock awe?

Exodus 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;View Shout History

Tensions in the Middle East have escalated after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane, with the Turkish President accusing Russia of deceit and Moscow announcing it would deploy anti-aircraft missiles to Syria.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said Wednesday on his ministry's Twitter feed that the country would instal S-400 defense missile systems at its Hmeymim air base near Latakia, on Syria's Mediterranean coast.

The missiles have a range of 250 kilometers (155 miles), according to the missilethreat.com website. The Turkish border is less than 45 kilometers (30 miles) away.

And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow has "serious doubts" that Turkey's downing of the Sukhoi Su-24 bomber near the Turkish-Syrian border Tuesday was a spur of the moment act.

"It looks very much like a planned provocation," Lavrov said.

The unusual clash between Russia and a NATO member highlights the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the Syrian war, which has drawn global powers, including the United States, into a chaotic and complex conflict.

"The incident with the Russian bomber was expected to provoke a hard response from Russia. Turkey downed a Russian warplane, one pilot was killed. This is more than just a clash of opinions between the two countries. In this situation, Russia could not turn a blind eye to the incident,"

'They knew the exact time and the exact place': Putin accuses US of leaking flight path of doomed jet to Turkey... as his fearsome anti-aircraft missiles roll into Syria

Putin has accused the U.S. of being complicit in the destruction of its jet The Russian jet was downed by Turkey after it entered Turkish airspace He claimed Russia gave the U.S. the flight path data for the doomed aircraft This was either 'leaked' or it 'does not control what its allies are doing' Meanwhile, today Russia's fearsome S-400 missile systems arrived in Syria Putin has also agreed to coordinate airstrikes with France against ISIS

Turkey and Russia traded newly heated barbs and threats Thursday as the fallout from Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane threatened to lead to a wholesale breach in the countries’ relations.

Prime Minister Dmitry A. Medvedev gave government officials two days to draw up a list of ways for Russia to curb commercial ties and investment projects. That included the possible shelving of a multibillion-dollar deal to build a gas pipeline through Turkey that President Vladimir V. Putin once trumpeted as a welcome alternative route for substantial Russian gas exports to Europe.

Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stoked the confrontation by hurling insults at each other.

The standoff between the two proud, pugnacious leaders boded ill for the mission of President François Hollande of France, who arrived in Moscow to hold talks over dinner with Putin as part of his effort after the Paris attacks to cement an international coalition to confront the Islamic State.

Right after Turkey shot down the Russian warplane on Tuesday, claiming it had violated Turkish airspace, senior officials in both Moscow and Ankara vowed that they wanted to limit any larger conflict. Given that Turkey is a member of NATO, any military confrontation risks pulling in its Western allies.

But the economic, geographic, and historically competitive ties that bind the two faded empires are facing new strains.

At the very least, the tension will retard chances of resolving the bloody war in Syria.

On Thursday, Putin accused Turkey of ruining diplomatic relations between the two countries by refusing to apologize for what he said was a clear offense. Erdogan asserted that his country would shoot down the Russian plane all over again under the same circumstances.

Putin repeated his accusation that the downing of the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 was “a stab in the back” and reiterated Russia’s position that the plane was brought down over Syria, not Turkey.

“We have still not heard any comprehensible apologies from the Turkish political leaders, or any offers to compensate for the damage caused, or promises to punish the criminals for their crime,” Putin said at the Kremlin, addressing 15 new foreign ambassadors who were presenting their credentials. His remarks were carried live on national television.

“One gets the impression that the Turkish leaders are deliberately leading Russian-Turkish relations into a gridlock,” he said, “and we are sorry to see this.”

Leaders in Turkey said no apology would be forthcoming. “Faced with the same violation today, Turkey would give the same response,” Erdogan told a group of officials in Ankara.

Even before any formal plans for economic sanctions were drawn up, Russia was already retaliating. Moscow has a long history of suddenly discovering faults with the goods and services of other nations when diplomatic relations sour.

Hundreds of trucks bearing Turkish fruits and vegetables and other products were stacking up at the Georgian border with Russia, Russian news media reported, as inspections slowed to a crawl and Russian officials suggested there might be a terrorist threat from the goods.

In the Krasnodar region, a group of 39 Turkish businessmen attending an agriculture exhibition were detained for entering Russia on tourist rather than business visas — a common practice — and were slated for deportation, according to a report on the website of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

Government officials announced that a special year of cultural exchanges slated for all of 2016 would be canceled.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - France and Russia will exchange intelligence on Islamic State and other rebel groups to improve the effectiveness of their aerial bombing campaigns in Syria, French President Francois Hollande said on Thursday after talks with Vladimir Putin.

However, the two men remained at odds over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia whom Western and Sunni Arab countries blame for Syria's nearly five-year civil war and want removed from power.

Speaking after a working dinner in the Kremlin with Putin, Hollande said they had agreed to target only Islamic State and similar jihadi groups in Syria. The West has accused Moscow of targeting mostly Western-backed rebel groups fighting Assad.

"What we agreed, and this is important, is to strike only terrorists and Daesh (Islamic State) and to not strike forces that are fighting terrorism. We will exchange information about whom to hit and whom not to hit," Hollande told a joint news conference with Putin.

France will also increase its support to rebel groups battling Islamic State on the ground in Syria, Hollande added.

Hollande is on a diplomatic offensive to build a common front against the militant Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130 people.

View galleryPutin meets Hollande in MoscowRussia's President Vladimir Putin (centre R) shakes hands with his French counterpart Francois H …Islamic State has also said it downed a Russian plane on Oct. 31 over the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, killing all 224 people on board.

Putin said Moscow was ready to unite with Paris against a "mutual enemy", but he reaffirmed Moscow's long-standing view that Assad and the Syrian government were also allies in the fight against terrorism.

"I believe that the fate of the president of Syria must stay in the hands of the Syrian people," Putin said, in stark contrast to Hollande, who insisted Assad could play no future political role in the country.

TARGET OIL SUPPLIES

French officials say Putin and Hollande have a good working relationship, but in an initial televised exchange before dinner the two men had appeared uncomfortable and avoided eye contact.

Both Russia and France have stepped up their aerial bombing campaigns in Syria since the attacks in Paris.

On Thursday both Putin and Hollande stressed the need to step up air strikes against vehicles transporting oil across territory controlled by Islamic State and thereby deliver a blow to a key source of financing for the militant group.

Putin used the opportunity of the joint news conference with Hollande to repeat his accusations against Turkey of turning a blind eye to oil smuggling by Islamic State. He said it was "theoretically possible" that Ankara was unaware of oil supplies entering its territory from Islamic State-controlled areas of Syria but added that this was hard to imagine.

Relations between Russia and NATO member Turkey have deteriorated sharply since Turkish forces downed a Russian warplane on Tuesday and Moscow has warned of "serious consequences" for economic ties.

Hollande said the downing of the Russian jet highlighted the need for countries to coordinate their military activities more closely to avoid a possible repetition of what he called a "regrettable incident". He again called for a "de-escalation" of the tensions between Moscow and Ankara.

Putin also said Russia would keep cooperating with the United States and its partners to fight Islamic State in Syria, but that cooperation will be in jeopardy if there are any repeats of the shooting down of the jet.

"We are ready to cooperate with the coalition which is led by the United States. But of course incidents like the destruction of our aircraft and the deaths of our servicemen... are absolutely unacceptable," Putin said.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Israel National News is reporting that in the wake of Turkey shooting down a Russian warplane, Moscow is retaliating with economic measures - and the major beneficiary may be Israel. Medvedev said Thursday - with Israel among several countries likely to benefit as Moscow looks for alternative trading and tourism partners.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev told a televised cabinet meeting "The government has been ordered to work out a system of response measures to this act of aggression in the economic and humanitarian spheres." Under Russian law those punitive steps could include halting joint economic projects, restricting financial and trade transactions and changing customs duties. Measures could also target the tourism and transport sectors, labor markets and "humanitarian contacts," according to Israel National News.

"[T]he focus will be on introducing limits or bans on the economic activities of Turkish economic structures working in Russia, a limitation of the supply of products, including food products, and on the work and provision of services by Turkish companies and other restrictive measures," Medvedev said.

"I propose doing all this in a period of two days so that we can move to setting up the appropriate procedures as quickly as possible."

Economic hits could also include two major projects with energy-poor Turkey: the planned joint Turk Stream gas pipeline under the Black Sea and the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, Turkey's first, in the south of the country.

Moscow has already warned its nationals against visiting Turkey and has stepped up controls of Turkish agricultural imports, a major blow to Turkey, which is a favorite for Russian tourists. Israeli tourism providers have already begun selling the Jewish state as a tourist alternative, and Israel's tourism ministry is investing $2.6 million in efforts to woo the Russian market.

Russia's Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev said his country would be replacing Turkish produce with goods from Iran, Israel and Morocco:

"Turkish vegetables account for 20 percent of the total Russian imports of vegetables. Import of vegetables, tomatoes in the first place, will be substituted with those from Iran, Morocco, Israel, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan."

Turkey also accounts for a quarter of Russian citrus fruit imports, he said, adding that the country would similarly be switching to alternative providers:

"Turkey imports about 250,000 tons of citrus fruits, a quarter of the total citrus imported into Russia. We can replace citrus imports by supplies from South Africa, Morocco, China, Argentina, Israel, Abkhazia, Georgia."

Russia also said it could redirect its Turkish exports including wheat and oil to countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Obama Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Isn’t Doing Anything To Stop It

At this point, is there anyone that still doesn’t know that ISIS is selling hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen oil in Turkey? As you will see below, this is very much an open secret, but the mainstream media in the United States is being strangely silent about this. Why? Well, because if the truth came out Turkey would have to be kicked out of NATO and Barack Obama would probably be facing impeachment proceedings. He claims to be fighting ISIS, and yet an endless parade of trucks carrying oil that ISIS has stolen goes back and forth over the Turkish border with his full knowledge and approval. Barack Obama is very much aware that Turkey is buying oil from ISIS and he refuses to do anything about it. If the Republicans are looking for a scandal which could completely wreck Obama’s presidency and essentially secure the 2016 election for them, this is it.

Do you want to know why the Turkish government ordered the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 bomber on Tuesday?

It is because the Russians have been bombing the trucks that transport oil from ISIS into Turkey.

The Turks claim that the Russian aircraft violated their airspace for approximately 17 seconds. But as Paul Craig Roberts has pointed out, in order for the SU-24 to fly only 1.15 miles in 17 seconds would mean that it was flying at stall speed the entire time, which is ridiculous. Clearly there is something very fishy with the official story, and the Russians say that they never violated Turkey’s airspace at any time.

But no matter who was right and who was wrong, normally countries go out of their way to avoid an international incident. Instead, it appeared that the Turks were quite eager to shoot down the SU-24, and since that time Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has refused to apologize. In fact, he has warned Russia “not to play with fire” and he insists that it is the Russians that need to apologize…

“Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties, which consisted of responding to … violations of the rules of engagement. I think this is the essence.”

Is he insane?

What in the world would cause Erdogan to behave so irrationally?

Well, the truth is that Erdogan has been very upset these days because the Russians have been interfering with the illegal oil smuggling that his family has been conducting.

One of the ways that Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded to the downing of the SU-24 has been to drop “truth bombs” on Turkey. Just check out some of the comments that he made this week following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande…

Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.

The views resemble a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey, the Russian President stressed. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty.”

“We are talking about a commercial-scale supply of oil from the occupied Syrian territories seized by terrorists. It is from these areas [that oil comes from], and not with any others. And we can see it from the air, where these vehicles are going,” Putin said.

If the Russians can see this very clearly, do you think that the U.S. military and U.S. intelligence agencies can see this too?

Of course we can. We have even better surveillance capabilities than the Russians do.

Without a doubt, Obama knows exactly what is going on.

The SU-24 was shot down over an area that is used to transport ISIS oil into Turkey. This is a point that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been careful to highlight. The following comes from Sputnik News…

Lavrov also pointed to Turkey’s role in the propping up the terror network through the oil trade.

“The Russian Minister reminded his counterpart about Turkey’s involvement in the ISIS’ illegal trade in oil, which is transported via the area where the Russian plane was shot down, and about the terrorist infrastructure, arms and munitions depots and control centers that are also located there,” the statement read.

“Sergei Lavrov specifically said that this act by Turkey will have serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations and will not go unanswered.”

It would be one thing if everyone was just finding out now that ISIS is selling oil in Turkey.

But the truth is that this has been known about for quite a long time.

For instance, the U.S. uncovered “undeniable” evidence that Turkey was buying oil from ISIS back in July…

Western officials have long harbored suspicions about Turkey’s links to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh. One official told The Guardian’s Martin Chulov in July that a US-led raid on the compound housing ISIS’ “chief financial officer” produced “undeniable” evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members, mainly by purchasing oil from them.

So why didn’t Barack Obama do anything about it?

Why has he continued to allow oil trucks to go back and forth between ISIS and Turkey “day and night” ever since then?

We have clearly been betrayed by Obama. Even our top military commanders know what is happening. Just this week, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark went on television and admitted that oil from ISIS is “probably going through Turkey”…

Asked whether he agreed with Vladimir Putin that Turkey was aiding ISIS, Clark responded, “All along there’s always been the idea that Turkey was supporting ISIS in some way,” before going on to accuse Ankara of funneling ISIS terrorists through Turkey and buying ISIS’ stolen oil in the black market.

“Someone’s buying that oil that ISIS is selling, it’s going through somewhere, it looks to me like it’s probably going through Turkey,” said Clark, before also going on to accuse Putin of supporting terrorists through his allegiance with Bashar Al-Assad.

So why is Barack Obama completely silent about this?

And it isn’t as if the Turkish government is just turning a blind eye to what is going on.

No, the truth is that the Turkish president’s own son is the one buying and exporting the oil. The following comes from Sputnik News…

Turkey downed the Russian Su-24 Fencer bomber over Syria in response to the destruction of hundreds of semi-truck oil tankers sent to Turkey from Syria by the Islamic State, Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said.

The information minister said that oil smuggled into Turkey was bought by the Turkish president’s son, who owns an oil company.

“All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well,” al-Zoubi told RIA Novosti in an interview.

It is Bilal Erdogan that is the head of the company that is buying oil from ISIS, and he is shipping much of it to Japan. BMZ Ltd. is described as a “family business”, and many of President Erdogan’s “close relatives” hold shares in the company. The following is an excerpt from an excellent article by F. William Engdahl…

The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdogan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.

Bilal Erdogan owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

Gürsel Tekin vice-president of the Turkish Republican Peoples’ Party, CHP, declared in a recent Turkish media interview, “President Erdogan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdo?an is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution.” Tekin adds that Bilal’s maritime company doing the oil trades for ISIS, BMZ Ltd, is “a family business and president Erdogan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.”

Does Barack Obama know all of this?

Of course he does.

Our intelligence agencies would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to have uncovered all of this by now.

The president of Turkey’s own family is working directly with ISIS, and Obama is doing nothing.

In fact, President Erdogan’s own daughter is even helping to provide “extended medical care” for wounded ISIS militants in Turkish hospitals…

A discontented nurse working clandestinely for a covert medical corps in Şanlıurfa—a city in south-eastern Turkey, close to the border with neighboring Syria— divulges information about the alleged role which Sümeyye Erdoğan plays in providing extended medical care for ISIS wounded militants transferred to Turkish hospitals. Living in a dilapidated apartment in Istanbul’s outskirts along with her two children, a 34-year- old emaciated nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, disclosed her seven-week agonizing ordeal of working in secret military hospital in Şanlıurfa, 150 km (93 miles) east of Gaziantep and 1,300 km (808 miles) southeast of Istanbul. “Almost every day several khaki Turkish military trucks were bringing scores of severely injured, shaggy ISIS rebels to our secret hospital and we had to prepare the operating rooms and help doctors in the following procedures.”

Clearly, the Turkish government is on the same side as ISIS. It has also been documented that ISIS fighters have trained in Turkey and that the Turkish government has been funneling weapons into Syria.

But desperate attempts have been made to keep this information away from the public. In fact, two Turkish journalists that were working to expose the funneling of weapons into Syria have just been arrested and could be facing life in prison…

Two journalists from an opposition Turkish newspaper have been arrested, accused of spying by an Istanbul court following reports that Turkey’s intelligence agency sent weapons to Islamist rebel groups in Syria.

In another case of journalists facing criminal charges and censorship, editor-in-chief Can Dundar and Erdem Gul, the newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief, were taken into custody on Thursday night, Turkish media reported.

The two men are accused of spying and “divulging state secrets”, according to reports, as well as being members of a terror organisation. Another charge included the violation of state security after the release of the footage.

Such charges could see the men face life imprisonment.

And the Turkish government even got Joe Biden to apologize for comments that he made that exposed Turkey’s role in supplying the jihadists in Syria. The following comes from CNN…

“They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,” Biden told students.

“We could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them,” he said.

On Turkey’s alleged role, Biden said, “President (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan told me, he’s an old friend, said, ‘You were right. We let too many people (including foreign fighters) through.’ Now they are trying to seal their border,” he said, according to transcripts.

Biden later “apologized” for saying those things, but were they true?

Of course what Biden said was true.

The government of Turkey desperately wants to see the Assad regime toppled, and so they are training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals.

This is being done with the full knowledge and complicity of the Obama administration, and it is a betrayal on a level that is almost unspeakable.

Once again, if the Republicans are looking for a scandal that could destroy Obama’s presidency and deliver the 2016 election into their hands, this is it.

Sadly, just like on so many other occasions, the Republicans will probably find a way to fumble this football too.

But the American people deserve to know the truth. Please share this information with as many people as you can on Facebook, Twitter and through email. If we can get enough people screaming bloody murder about this, perhaps we can get someone in the mainstream media to take notice of what potentially could be the scandal of the century.

Russia released an extensive report this week tying Turkey’s ruling family to the Islamic State.

This comes after Turkey shot down a Russian plane over disputed region of Turkey and Syria.

This report may also explain why Obama has allegedly been fighting the Islamic State for a year as they grow more powerful and larger.Via Vlad Tepes:

From the video: Yes, Russia is being opportunistic to release this information now after their jet was shot down. But, did Turkey (or the US) shoot down the Russian jet because it was interfering with oil shipments from the Islamic State to Turkey?

The Kurdish media documented several instances of Turkey’s support for ISIS last year.Turkey has been playing both sides for over a year now.

TURKEY BLOCKADES RUSSIAN SHIPPING, BLACK SEA FLEET COMPLETELY CUT OFFTurkey is authorized to close the Straits to all foreign warships in wartime or when it was threatened by aggression

Turkey has begun a defacto blockade of Russian naval vessels, preventing transit through the Dardanelles and the Strait of Bosporus, between the Black Sea and Mediterranean.

According to the AIS tracking system for the movement of maritime vessels, only Turkish vessels are moving along the Bosphorus, and in the Dardanelles there is no movement of any shipping at all.

At the same time, both from the Black Sea, and from the Mediterranean Sea, there is a small cluster of ships under the Russian flag, just sitting and waiting.

The image below shows the situation with the ships using the GPS transponder onboard each vessel:

In addition, shipping inside the Black Sea from Novorossiisk and Sevastopol in the direction of the Bosphorus, no Russian vessels are moving. This indirectly confirms the a CNN statement that Turkey may have blocked the movement of Russian ships on the Dardanelles and the Strait of Bosporus.

There is a Treaty specifically covering the use of these waterways by nations of the world. That Treaty is the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits.

It is a 1936 agreement that gives Turkey control over the Bosporus Straitsand the Dardanelles and regulates the transit of naval warships. The Convention gives Turkey full control over the Straits and guarantees the free passage of civilian vessels in peacetime. It restricts the passage of naval ships not belonging to Black Sea states. The terms of the convention have been the source of controversy over the years, most notably concerning theSoviet Union‘s military access to the Mediterranean Sea.

Signed on 20 July 1936 at the Montreux Palace in Switzerland, it permitted Turkey to remilitarise the Straits. It went into effect on 9 November 1936 and was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 11 December 1936. It is still in force today, with some amendments.

The Convention consists of 29 Articles, four annexes and one protocol. Articles 2–7 consider the passage of merchant ships. Articles 8–22 consider the passage of war vessels. The key principle of freedom of passage and navigation is stated in articles 1 and 2. Article 1 provides that “The High Contracting Parties recognize and affirm the principle of freedom of passage and navigation by sea in the Straits”. Article 2 states that “In time of peace, merchant vessels shall enjoy complete freedom of passage and navigation in the Straits, by day and by night, under any flag with any kind of cargo.”

The International Straits Commission was abolished, authorizing the full resumption of Turkish military control over the Straits and the refortification of the Dardanelles. Turkey was authorized to close the Straits to all foreign warships in wartime or when it was threatened by aggression; additionally, it was authorized to refuse transit from merchant ships belonging to countries at war with Turkey.

Turkey has now invoked its power, but has not publicly stated whether they are blocking Russian Naval Vessels because Turkey is “threatened with aggression” or whether Turkey considers itself to be “at war.” Last week, Turkey shot down a Russian military jet over Syria and this has caused a major rift between the two nations.

This latest development of blockading Russian naval vessels is a massive and terrifyingly dangerous development. Blockading Russia and preventing its Black Sea fleet from traveling to the rest of the world, or back to its home port, is something that will not sit well with the Russians.

Earlier today, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the deployment of 150,000 Russian troops and equipment into Syria, but then ALSO ordered the deployment of 7,000 additional Russian Troops, tanks, rocket launchers and artillery, to the Russian Border of Turkey at Armenia, with orders to be “fully combat ready.”

It is important to note two things:

1) Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as is the United States and most of Europe, AND;

2) Turkey took the first shot at Russia when they intentionally shot down a Russian jet last week.

It is important to remember these facts because, as a NATO member, Turkey can invoke Article 5 of the NATO Treaty which requires all NATO members to come to its defense if Turkey is “attacked.” So if Russia decides to fight back against Turkey downing its military jet, the Turks might call NATO and claim they’ve been “attacked” thereby calling-up NATO forces to go to war against Russia.

It bears remembering, however, that Turkey shot first. Turkey was the nation which “attacked.”

Before NATO and the world get dragged into a war between Russia and Turkey, the citizens of the world must be ready to remind our leaders that Turkey Shot First.

Why did the Turks shoot? Because Turkey has been allowing the terrorist group ISIS to sell the oil it has stolen from countries it is conquering. The oil is transported from the wells in countries where ISIS has seized power, is taken by truck to Turkey, and is then sold at cheap prices on the black market.

This black market selling results in over 1 Million dollars per DAY flowing into ISIS to keep it equipped and supplied for its ongoing terrorist activities. Only a fool would think that all this is going on through Turkey, without some Turkish officials having their hands out for money from the illegal oil sales. Put simply, Turkey appears to be in business with ISIS and Russia is harming that by attacking ISIS in Syria.

So Turkey shot down one of the Russian planes that was attacking ISIS. Russia is quite furious; with the Russian President stating the shoot down was “a stab in the back of Russia” and was carried out by “accomplices to terrorism.”

It would be shocking if NATO were to defend Turkey under such circumstances because by its actions, Turkey is providing material support to the terrorist group ISIS. For NATO to defend that would make all of us accomplices to terrorism.

Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President

In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border.

Russia’s Sergey Lavrov is not one foreign minister known to mince his words. Just earlier today, 24 hours after a Russian plane was brought down by the country whose president three years ago said “a short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack”, had this to say: “We have serious doubts this was an unintended incident and believe this is a planned provocation” by Turkey.

But even that was tame compared to what Lavrov said to his Turkish counterparty Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier today during a phone call between the two (Lavrov who was supposed to travel to Turkey has since canceled such plans).

As Sputnik transcribes, according to a press release from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lavrov pointed out that, “by shooting down a Russian plane on a counter-terrorist mission of the Russian Aerospace Force in Syria, and one that did not violate Turkey’s airspace, the Turkish government has in effect sided with ISIS.”

It was in this context when Lavrov added that “Turkey’s actions appear premeditated, planned, and undertaken with a specific objective.”

More importantly, Lavrov pointed to Turkey’s role in the propping up the terror network through the oil trade. Per the Russian statement:

“The Russian Minister reminded his counterpart about Turkey’s involvement in the ISIS’ illegal trade in oil, which is transported via the area where the Russian plane was shot down, and about the terrorist infrastructure, arms and munitions depots and control centers that are also located there.”

Others reaffirmed Lavrov’s stance, such as retired French General Dominique Trinquand, who said that “Turkey is either not fighting ISIL at all or very little, and does not interfere with different types of smuggling that takes place on its border, be it oil, phosphate, cotton or people,” he said.

The reason we find this line of questioning fascinating is that just last week in the aftermath of the French terror attack but long before the Turkish downing of the Russian jet, we wrote about “The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking” in which we asked who is the one “breaching every known law of funding terrorism when buying ISIS crude, almost certainly with the tacit approval by various “western alliance” governments, and why is it that these governments have allowed said middleman to continue funding ISIS for as long as it has?”

Precisely one week later, in even more tragic circumstances, suddenly everyone is asking this question.

And while we patiently dig to find who the on and offshore “commodity trading” middleman are, who cart away ISIS oil to European and other international markets in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars, one name keeps popping up as the primary culprit of regional demand for the Islamic State’s “terrorist oil” – that of Turkish president Recep Erdogan’s son: Bilal Erdogan.

His very brief bio:

Necmettin Bilal Erdogan, commonly known as Bilal Erdogan (born 23 April 1980) is the third child of Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, the current President of Turkey.

After graduating from Kartal Imam Hatip High School in 1999, Bilal Erdogan moved to the US for undergraduate education. He also earned a Masters Degree in John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2004. After graduation, he served in the World Bank as intern for a while. He returned Turkey in 2006 and started to his business life. Bilal Erdogan is one of the three equal shareholders of “BMZ Group Denizcilik “, a marine transportation corporation.

Here is a recent picture of Bilal, shown in a photo from a Turkish 2014 article, which “asked why his ships are now in Syria”:

In the next few days, we will present a full breakdown of Bilal’s various business ventures, starting with his BMZ Group which is the name implicated most often in the smuggling of illegal Iraqi and Islamic State through to the western supply chain, but for now here is a brief, if very disturbing snapshot, of both father and son Erdogan by F. William Engdahl, one which should make everyone ask whether the son of Turkey’s president (and thus, the father) is the silent mastermind who has been responsible for converting millions of barrels of Syrian Oil into hundreds of millions of dollars of Islamic State revenue.

By F. William Engdahl, posted originally in New Eastern Outlook:Erdogan’s Dirth Dangerous ISIS Games

More and more details are coming to light revealing that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, variously known as ISIS, IS or Daesh, is being fed and kept alive by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish President and by his Turkish intelligence service, including MIT, the Turkish CIA. Turkey, as a result of Erdogan’s pursuit of what some call a Neo-Ottoman Empire fantasies that stretch all the way to China, Syria and Iraq, threatens not only to destroy Turkey but much of the Middle East if he continues on his present path.

In October 2014 US Vice President Joe Biden told a Harvard gathering that Erdogan’s regime was backing ISIS with “hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons…” Biden later apologized clearly for tactical reasons to get Erdo?an’s permission to use Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base for airstrikes against ISIS in Syria, but the dimensions of Erdogan’s backing for ISIS since revealed is far, far more than Biden hinted.

ISIS militants were trained by US, Israeli and now it emerges, by Turkish special forces at secret bases in Konya Province inside the Turkish border to Syria, over the past three years. Erdo?an’s involvement in ISIS goes much deeper. At a time when Washington, Saudi Arabia and even Qatar appear to have cut off their support for ISIS, they remaining amazingly durable. The reason appears to be the scale of the backing from Erdo?an and his fellow neo-Ottoman Sunni Islam Prime Minister, Ahmet Davuto?lu.

Nice Family Business

The prime source of money feeding ISIS these days is sale of Iraqi oil from the Mosul region oilfields where they maintain a stronghold. The son of Erdogan it seems is the man who makes the export sales of ISIS-controlled oil possible.

Bilal Erdo?an owns several maritime companies. He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.

Gürsel Tekin vice-president of the Turkish Republican Peoples’ Party, CHP, declared in a recent Turkish media interview, “President Erdogan claims that according to international transportation conventions there is no legal infraction concerning Bilal’s illicit activities and his son is doing an ordinary business with the registered Japanese companies, but in fact Bilal Erdo?an is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution.” Tekin adds that Bilal’s maritime company doing the oil trades for ISIS, BMZ Ltd, is “a family business and president Erdogan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.”

In addition to son Bilal’s illegal and lucrative oil trading for ISIS, Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the Turkish President apparently runs a secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily being in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdogan seems hell-bent on toppling.

Turkish citizen Ramazan Bagol, captured this month by Kurdish People’s Defence Units,YPG, as he attempted to join ISIS from Konya province, told his captors that said he was sent to ISIS by the ‘Ismailia Sect,’ a strict Turkish Islam sect reported to be tied to Recep Erdogan. Baol said the sect recruits members and provides logistic support to the radical Islamist organization. He added that the Sect gives jihad training in neighborhoods of Konya and sends those trained here to join ISIS gangs in Syria.

According to French geopolitical analyst, Thierry Meyssan, Recep Erdogan “organised the pillage of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, the economic capital, and stole the machine-tools. Similarly, he organised the theft of archeological treasures and set up an international market in Antioch…with the help of General Benoît Puga, Chief of Staff for the Elysée, he organised a false-flag operation intended to provoke the launching of a war by the Atlantic Alliance – the chemical bombing of la Ghoutta in Damascus, in August 2013. “

Meyssan claims that the Syria strategy of Erdo?an was initially secretly developed in coordination with former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé and Erdogan’s then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, in 2011, after Juppe won a hesitant Erdogan to the idea of supporting the attack on traditional Turkish ally Syria in return for a promise of French support for Turkish membership in the EU. France later backed out, leaving Erdogan to continue the Syrian bloodbath largely on his own using ISIS.

Gen. John R. Allen, an opponent of Obama’s Iran peace strategy, now US diplomatic envoy coordinating the coalition against the Islamic State, exceeded his authorized role after meeting with Erdogan and “promised to create a “no-fly zone” ninety miles wide, over Syrian territory, along the whole border with Turkey, supposedly intended to help Syrian refugees fleeing from their government, but in reality to apply the “Juppé-Wright plan”. The Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, revealed US support for the project on the TV channel A Haber by launching a bombing raid against the PKK.” Meyssan adds.

There are never winners in war and Erdogan’s war against Syria’s Assad demonstrates that in bold. Turkey and the world deserve better. Ahmet Davutoglu’s famous “Zero Problems With Neighbors” foreign policy has been turned into massive problems with all neighbors due to the foolish ambitions of Erdogan and his gang.

The Russian president raised the topic of Russia's Sukhoi Su-24M downed by Turkey at his meetings with foreign leaders in Paris. Everybody agreed there was no need to shoot the jet down.

"As for the downed Russian jet, of course I raised that theme at all the bilateral meetings which I had. I gave relevant explanations about what had happened. All the colleagues listened very attentively and most of them at least share the opinion that there had been no need to attack the unprotected Russian bomber, which was of no threat to Turkey," Putin told journalists.

The Russian president pointed out that Russia has grounds to suspect that the aircraft was downed to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey. The official noted that terrorists use visa-free traveling between Turkey and Russia for moving across the border.

Answering a question on whether Moscow wants to form a broad anti-terrorist coalition, Putin said: "We always supported this." "However, this cannot be done while someone continues to use several terrorist organizations to reach their immediate goals," he added.

The Russian president stressed that financial support to terrorists in Syria continues. "We have recently received additional reports that confirm that that oil from ISIL-controlled [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - former name of the Islamic State terrorist organization] territories is delivered to the territory of Turkey on an industrial scale," Putin noted.

Putin didn't hold a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Le Bourget.

"We did not hold a meeting with the Turkish president," Putin told journalists on Monday.

Putin however also admitted being saddened by worsening Russian-Turkish relations.

"I think we're all saddened and I personally am saddened because I myself did quite a lot for a buildup of these relations for quite some time," Putin told reporters. "But problems do exist and they emerged a long enough time ago and we have been trying to resolve them in dialogue with our Turkish partners."Russia-Turkey tension over downed plane

An F-16 fighter jet of the Turkish Air Force brought Russia’s Su-24M frontline bomber down in the morning of Tuesday, November 24. Turkish defence officials claimed the Russian crew had intruded into Turkish airspace in the area of the Syrian-Turkish land-surface border. However, the Russian Defense Ministry says the Su-24M was flying over the Syrian territory and there was now intrusion in Turkish airspace.

The crew - Lt Col Oleg Peshkov and Capt Konstantin Murakhtin managed to eject themselves from the aircraft but Lt Col Peshkov was killed in midair by gunfire opened by militants from among the ethnic Turkomans.

Capt Murakhtin was rescued and taken to the Russian airbase at Hmeimin, Latakia province.

The search and rescue operation involved two Mi-8 helicopters. One of them was damaged by gunfire and made a forced landing. A contract marine serviceman died in the incident while the rest of the search party was evacuated to a safe place. The damaged helicopter was destroyed later by mortar fire from a land area controlled by militants.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said, speaking at the ceremony of the presentation of credentials by new foreign ambassadors on Thursday that Turkey was steering the relations into the gridlock as it neither apologized, nor offered to repair the damage, nor promised to punish those responsible. "We have not heard yet apologies from the highest political level of Turkey. Nor do we hear proposals to repair the damage or promises to punish the perpetrators for the committed crime," Putin said. "One gets the impression that the Turkish leadership is steering deliberately the Russian-Turkish relations into the dead end, which is regrettable," he added.

In an interview with CNN, Erdogan warned Moscow that Turkey would take steps if its warplane were downed by the Russian S-400 missile system in case it violated the Syrian airspace. "I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us," he said. "Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday said he would be ready to quit office if allegations by Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that Turkey traded oil with Islamic State (IS) jihadists were proven.

"I will say something very strong here. If such a thing is proven, the nobility of our nation would require that I would not stay in office," Erdogan was quoted by the state-run Anatolia news agency as saying on the sidelines of the UN climate talks near Paris, which Putin is also attending.

Challenging Putin, who has refused to meet the Turkish leader after the shooting down of a Russian military jet, Erdogan added: "And I tell Mr Putin 'would you stay in that office?' I say this clearly."

Putin earlier Monday accused Ankara of shooting down the Russian Su-24 warplane last week to protect supplies of oil from the Islamic State group to Turkey, charges Turkey vehemently denies.

"Let's remain patient and let's not act emotionally," said Erdogan.

Erdogan said that Turkey obtained all its oil and gas imports "though the legal path".

"We are not dishonest so as to do this kind of exchange with terrorist groups. Everyone needs to know this."

After the Su-24 bomber was downed on the Syrian border last week, Putin accused the Turks of being "accomplices of terrorists" and said oil from IS territory was being exported through Turkey.

“We actively support that. We are open for coordination of practical steps, certainly, in interaction with the Syrian government,” Lavrov said about an earlier proposal by French President Francois Hollande. “We are convinced that by blocking the border we will in many respects solve the tasks to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”

“We hope that initiative by President Hollande will be implemented within the framework of our joint work, including in the Group of Support for Syria,” he added.

Lavrov doubted Ankara’s dedication to eliminating IS.

“The hotbed of terrorist treat is concentrated in vast territories of Syria and Iraq,” he said. “It is the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and we have a common opinion that it can be exterminated only without any double standards. Special responsibility in terms of denouncing such double standards and acting in a united front against terrorism rests on Syria’s neighbor countries,” he said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Earlier this month the German newspaper Deutsche Welle published a report documenting the transfer of supplies across the Turkish border to areas controlled by the Islamic State.

The Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet also published reports revealing the transfer of weapons to Syria by Turkey’s intelligence agency. The Turkish government responded to the reports by arresting journalists.Operation Total Destruction

Iraqis think the U.S. is in cahoots with the Islamic State, and it is hurting the war

On the front lines of the battle against the Islamic State, suspicion of the United States runs deep. Iraqi fighters say they have all seen the videos purportedly showing U.S. helicopters airdropping weapons to the militants, and many claim they have friends and relatives who have witnessed similar instances of collusion.

Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting the Islamic State for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting American control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.

“It is not in doubt,” said Mustafa Saadi, who says his friend saw U.S. helicopters delivering bottled water to Islamic State positions. He is a commander in one of the Shiite militias that last month helped push the militants out of the oil refinery near Baiji in northern Iraq alongside the Iraqi army.

The Islamic State is “almost finished,” he said. “They are weak. If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days.”

Donald Trump Dares To Say That Turkey ‘Looks Like They’re On The Side Of ISIS’

Donald Trump just said something that he was not supposed to say, and it is something that Barack Obama will never admit. During an appearance on Sirius XM’s “Breitbart News Daily” on Tuesday morning, Trump stated that the Turkish government “looks like they’re on the side of ISIS more or less based on the oil”. This makes Trump the first presidential candidate to tell the truth about this to the American people. By now, just about everyone knows that ISIS is using Turkey as a home base, and I have previously written about how Turkey is “training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals”. But a major U.S. politician, especially one running for the White House, could get into really hot water for saying these kinds of things about our NATO ally. You see, the truth is that the American people are not supposed to know that Turkey is actually on the same side as ISIS and has been facilitating the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of oil that has been stolen by ISIS.

Just a few days ago, it was a really big deal when Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused ISIS of being “secret allies” with ISIS.

But for Donald Trump to say essentially the same thing is absolutely astounding. And this is why so many Americans are responding positively to his campaign. Trump just says whatever he thinks, and he doesn’t care about the consequences. The following comes from Politico…

Donald Trump aligned himself with Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, saying that Turkey appears to be on the side of Islamic State.

“Turkey looks like they’re on the side of ISIS more or less based on the oil,” Trump said in an interview with Sirius XM’s “Breitbart News Daily” Tuesday morning, echoing comments from the Russian president on Monday.

I doubt that this will get much more coverage in the U.S. media, because the mainstream media is not really supposed to be talking about what Turkey is doing. It would be extremely embarrassing for the Obama administration to admit that they have known that ISIS was shipping hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil into Turkey and didn’t do anything to stop it.

Sadly, the charade probably would have gone on for much longer if Russia hadn’t started talking about this. Last month, Putin actually showed surveillance photographs of oil vehicles heading into and out of Turkey to fellow world leaders…

“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” he said.

“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.

And in recent days, Putin has been pointing the finger at Turkey more directly. Just check out what he said last week following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande…

Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.

The views resemble a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey, the Russian President stressed. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty.”

“We are talking about a commercial-scale supply of oil from the occupied Syrian territories seized by terrorists. It is from these areas [that oil comes from], and not with any others. And we can see it from the air, where these vehicles are going,” Putin said.

And of course it isn’t just Putin making these sorts of allegations. In an article that I posted yesterday, I included quotes from prominent Middle Eastern leaders that are also accusing Turkey of facilitating the sale of ISIS oil.

Of course Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vehemently denies all of this.

He says that if anyone can show proof that Turkey has been involved in the sale of ISIS oil he will resign. He is lying through his teeth, and the western media are allowing him to get away with it.

Even more disturbing, Barack Obama is allowing him to get away with it.

If you or I gave ISIS five bucks, we would be arrested and hauled off to Guantanamo Bay. But the Turkish government can facilitate the sale of hundreds of millions of dollars of oil by ISIS, and Obama does nothing.

I wish more politicians would be like Trump and start talking about this, because Obama’s complicity in this matter is a betrayal of the American people on a level that is hard to put into words. He has known all along that ISIS has been shipping oil into Turkey on an industrial scale, and he has sat there and done nothing to stop it.

The reason why the Turks shot down that Russian SU-24 was because the Russians were interfering with the flow of ISIS oil. Now Russia and Turkey are on the verge of war, and this could potentially spark global conflict.

During his radio appearance on Tuesday, Trump also said the following…

“You don’t want to have World War III about what we’re talking about.”

And Trump is exactly right on this point.

We don’t want to see World War III.

As long as Barack Obama and the Turkish government keep openly lying to everyone, it is only going to make tensions in the region even worse.

But what can they do – tell the truth?

If they told the truth, Turkey would have to be kicked out of NATO, and Barack Obama would probably be facing impeachment proceedings.

So no, they aren’t going to tell the truth.

But hopefully now that Trump has had the courage to speak out, other leaders will stand up and do what is right.

World War III Draws Closer As Russia Accuses Turkey Of Being ‘Secret Allies’ With ISIS

Are Russia and Turkey on the verge of going to war? In remarks that were almost entirely ignored by the western media, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the Turkish government of being “secret allies” with ISIS on Friday. And on Monday, the Russians announced that they would be attempting to seal the border between Syria and Turkey, and we also learned that the Russians have been rushing heavy artillery units into Syria. As tensions between Russia and Turkey continue to escalate, could we be in danger of seeing World War III erupt in the Middle East?

The Russians have clearly become convinced that Turkey is at the core of the problems in Syria, and that is why the Russians now plan to completely seal Syria’s border with Turkey. Lavrov seems to think that this will represent a giant step toward defeating terror groups such as ISIS…

“We are convinced that by blocking the border we will in many respects solve the tasks to eradicate terrorism on Syrian soil.”

And the Russians are right about this. ISIS militants use Turkey as a home base, and it has been documented that Turkey has been “training ISIS militants, funneling weapons to them, buying their oil, and tending to their wounded in Turkish hospitals”.

It was already common knowledge that Turkey was doing all of these things, but now the Russian government is publicly accusing the Turkish government of being “secret allies” with ISIS. When Lavrov chose to use these words on Friday, he knew exactly what he was saying…

“We think it highly cynical when some of the countries speak about their commitment to the corresponding United Nations Security Council resolutions and declare themselves members of anti-terrorist coalitions but in reality are playing a game where terrorists are allocated the role of secret allies,” Lavrov stressed. “We have more and more questions about Ankara’s real plans and the degree of its readiness to exterminate terrorism, in particular in Syria, and its commitment to the normalization of the situation in Syria.”

So why would Turkey want to be allies with ISIS?

Well, first of all the Turkish government hates the Assad regime in Syria and would love to see it eliminated.

Secondly, ISIS has been selling hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil in Turkey, and it has been alleged that the Turkish president’s own family is involved.

This was all supposed to be on the down low, but now the Russians are extremely angry and they are airing this dirty laundry for all the world to see. On Monday, Vladimir Putin said that his government had “received additional information” that ISIS is shipping oil to Turkey on an “industrial scale”…

Russia has received additional intelligence confirming that oil from deposits controlled by Islamic State is moved through Turkey on an industrial scale, said Vladimir Putin. President Recep Erdogan said he will resign if this is confirmed.

Moscow has grounds to suspect that the Su-24 was downed by Turkish jets on November 24 to secure illegal oil deliveries from Syria to Turkey, he said speaking on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris on Monday.

“At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale,” he said.

“We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers,” Putin said.

And of course it isn’t just the Russians that are making these claims.

Mowaffak al Rubaie is a former member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and he says that sales of ISIS oil in Turkey have amounted to approximately 100 million dollars a month…

“In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell … $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold …[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price,” Mowaffak al Rubaie said in an interview with RT.

“Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”

“Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” he added. “Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”

You can’t sell 100 million dollars of stolen oil a month without the U.S. government knowing about it.

That means that Barack Obama has been fully aware of what has been going on, and he hasn’t told the American people the truth.

One of the reasons for his silence could be the fact that the president of Turkey’s own son has been involved. Just check out what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said just the other day…

“All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well.”

For much more on all of this, please see my previous article entitled “The Biggest Obama Scandal? He Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Is Doing Nothing To Stop It“.

Previously, the Russians had promised not to commit ground forces in Syria, but now that appears to be changing.

According to Debka, the Russians have already deployed three battalions of 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers at this point…

First, a body of three battalions of 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers was deployed at Khmeimin and has already started pounding rebel lines and command centers in the area. This heavy artillery system, capable of firing 152mm bombs at a rapid pace, is a veteran of Russia’s former campaigns against Islamic terrorist groups, especially in the Russian war against Islamic rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s.

In addition to the 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers, the Russians have also brought in TOS-1 220mm multiple rocket launchers…

Another heavy weapons system that Russia brought to Syria in recent days is the TOS-1 220mm multiple rocket launcher. This system, which is mounted on the chassis of a T-72 tank, has been deployed near the embattled Syrian cities of Hama and Homs.

With each passing day, we seem to be inching ever closer to the start of World War III.

And it is important to keep in mind that if war does break out, Turkey is a member of NATO, and so the U.S. would be obligated by treaty to help defend the Turks.

So let’s keep a close eye on what is happening in the Middle East, because it could end up having tremendous implications for all of us.

How is Barack Obama going to get out of this one? On Tuesday, the Russian military produced an impressive array of evidence that clearly shows that ISIS oil is being smuggled into Turkey on an industrial scale. The evidence included photographs taken by satellite and during aerial reconnaissance missions. What the Russians have shown the world is extremely compelling, and it raises some very disturbing questions. First of all, how involved is the Turkish government in all of this? There is no way in the world that an endless parade of trucks carrying ISIS oil could have marched through Turkish border checkpoints without the cooperation of the central government. Secondly, what did Obama know and when did he know it? The U.S. military has far better surveillance capabilities than the Russians do, and so it seems absolutely absurd to suggest that Obama didn’t know what was going on.

This new Russian evidence was presented to the world by Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, and he says that “thousands of oil trucks” have been going back and forth over the Turkish border…

According to Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, Russia is aware of three main oil smuggling routes to Turkey.

“Today, we are presenting only some of the facts that confirm that a whole team of bandits and Turkish elites stealing oil from their neighbors is operating in the region,” Antonov said, adding that this oil “in large quantities” enters the territory of Turkey via “live oil pipelines,” consisting of thousands of oil trucks.

But Antonov didn’t stop there. He went on to publicly accuse President Erdogan of Turkey and his family of running the entire operation…

“Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq. According to information we’ve received, the senior political leadership of the country – President Erdogan and his family – are involved in this criminal business,” said Deputy Defence Minister Anatoly Antonov.

“Maybe I’m being too blunt, but one can only entrust control over this thieving business to one’s closest associates.”

“In the West, no one has asked questions about the fact that the Turkish president’s son heads one of the biggest energy companies, or that his son-in-law has been appointed energy minister. What a marvelous family business!”

“The cynicism of the Turkish leadership knows no limits. Look what they’re doing. They went into someone else’s country, they are robbing it without compunction,” Antonov said.

And he is right.

The Erdogan family is knee deep in this scandal, and Barack Obama has known about it the entire time. For much more on the involvement of the Erdogan family in the smuggling of ISIS oil, please see my previous article entitled “The Biggest Obama Scandal? He Knows That Turkey Is Buying Oil From ISIS And He Is Doing Nothing To Stop It“.

During his presentation, Antonov gave us a lot of specifics. He even claimed that the Russians know precisely where much of this stolen oil ends up. The following comes from an Infowars report…

“The western route goes to Turkish ports on the Mediterranean coast, the north—to the refinery Batman in Turkey and the east—to the largest transshipment base in the village of Cizre,” the Russian Ministery of Defense web page states.

Oil from fields near the Syrian city of Raqqa—said to be the capital city of the Islamic State—is transported at night through the border town of Azaz, Syria and Reyhanli, Turkey to the port of Iskenderun and Dörtyol where the stolen oil is loaded on tankers.

The Russians claim the convoys are under the control of al-Nusra, the terror group funded by the Gulf Emirates and that cooperates with the Islamic State and supposed moderates in the Free Syrian Army.

Posted below is one of the charts that Antonov used during his presentation. As you can see, the Russians are not just making “vague accusations”…

If you would like to watch video of Antonov’s entire presentation, you can do so right here. What Antonov is saying in the video has been translated into English, so you will be able to understand it.

To me, one of the most striking things about the presentation was when Antonov accused the Turks of supplying fighters, ammunition and vehicles to ISIS and Al-Nusra. The following comes from an RT article…

Up to 2,000 fighters, 120 tons of ammunition and 250 vehicles have been delivered to Islamic State and Al-Nusra militants from Turkish territory, chief of National Centre for State Defense Control Lt.Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said.

“According to reliable intelligence reports, the Turkish side has been taking such actions for a long time and on a regular basis. And most importantly, it is not planning to stop them.”

If any of these allegations are true, Turkey should be immediately kicked out of NATO.

And if Barack Obama knew about any of this and refused to stop it, he should be facing impeachment proceedings.

For the moment, the official position of the U.S. government is that nothing that the Russians are saying is true…

Following Russian accusations, the US has again defended Turkey, denying any ties between Ankara and Islamic State.

“We flatly reject any notion that the Turks are somehow working with ISIL. Preposterous. And really very, kind of ridiculous,” Steve Warren, Pentagon spokesman, said.

Really?

As an American, I am utterly embarrassed that our “leaders” would continue to try to deny what Turkey is doing after everything that has come out.

By flat out lying to the world, we are losing any credibility that we had left.

Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil has been smuggled into Turkey, and our government still has the audacity to try to tell us not to look behind the curtain?

No wonder why most people over in Iraq are convinced that the U.S. is actually on the same side as ISIS. They don’t trust anything that we have to say anymore. The following comes from the Washington Post…

Ordinary people also have seen the videos, heard the stories and reached the same conclusion — one that might seem absurd to Americans but is widely believed among Iraqis — that the United States is supporting the Islamic State for a variety of pernicious reasons that have to do with asserting U.S. control over Iraq, the wider Middle East and, perhaps, its oil.

“It is not in doubt,” said Mustafa Saadi, who says his friend saw U.S. helicopters delivering bottled water to Islamic State positions. He is a commander in one of the Shiite militias that last month helped push the militants out of the oil refinery near Baiji in northern Iraq alongside the Iraqi army.

The Islamic State is “almost finished,” he said. “They are weak. If only America would stop supporting them, we could defeat them in days.”

If we are going to continue to lie about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stolen oil that has been smuggled into Turkey, why should anyone believe anything else that we have to say?

The Obama administration and the Turkish government have been caught in a massive, massive lie.

In the end, this is the kind of scandal that could potentially bring down the Obama administration, leaders in Congress, and many among the top brass in the U.S. military.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has adamantly denied Russian accusations of Turkey’s oil dealings with Islamic State, yet ordinary Turks question his words and are not surprised by the evidence presented by Moscow.

RT’s Harry Fear has asked people on the streets of Istanbul what they make of the report presented by the Russian Defense Ministry, which claims Erdogan and his family benefit from oil products smuggled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) from Syrian and Iraqi territory. Erdogan earlier promised to step down if such claims are proven true.

“I believe that Erdogan and ISIS [have some contract between them],” one man said. Another Istanbul resident told RT that “the rumors have been circulating for a long time and everyone knows what’s going on, but nothing has been done about it.”

“Now Erdogan has to step down,” he added.

Yet many are pessimistic about such a possibility, with one young man saying “I don’t think he’s going to resign. He’s a dictator and loves being one.”

Turkish mainstream media were reluctant to cover both the Russian Defense Ministry’s revelations and Erdogan’s dubious offer to resign. Sibel Gunes of the Turkish Journalists’ Association explained that “the government created a restrictive climate for opposition journalists wanting to report in the dangerous border regions.”

On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry released maps and satellite imagery it said proves that Turkey is the main consumer of oil smuggled by IS from Syria and Iraq, and claimed that the Turkish president and his family are involved in criminal dealings.

Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov, who hosted the briefing, said: “A united team of criminals and Turkish elites, involved in stealing oil from its neighbors, is acting in the region. This oil is being supplied to Turkey on a large industrial scale via improvised pipelines composed of thousands of oil truck tankers.”

Despite Erdogan’s robust promise to step down in the event that the intelligence presented is real, Antonov stressed the Turkish president’s resignation is not Russia’s goal and “is for the people of Turkey to decide.”

A foreboding Ministry of Defense (MoD) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that President Putin has ordered Federation military forces to cross Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s “red line” by assisting Syrian Kurds in defeating ISIS, and has further authorized the immediate sinking of the NATO warships that have just entered the Black Sea should they near the nation’s territorial boundaries.

According to this report, President Erdogan’s “red line” regarding the Kurdish peoples in Syria was drawn by him this past February when he stated: “We will never allow the establishment of a [Kurdish] state in Syria’s north and our south. We will continue our fight in this regard no matter what it costs.”

Erdogan’s greatest fear, this report explains, is the link up of the three majority Kurdish cantons of northern Syria (Jazira, Kobane and Afrin) which would eliminate the territory now held by Turkish armed Islamic terrorists providing his terroristic criminal cartel with $800 million of profit earned this year alone from the smuggling of illegal Islamic State oil being funneled through this area to the port of Ceyhan in the Adana Province in southern Turkey.

With Federation Aerospace Forces, Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces and Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) smashing Turkey’s “game” in Syria in order to seal the Turkey-Syria border away from Islamic State oil being smuggled through it, this report continues, Erdogan carried through with his threat the “Turkish Army will strike” by his downing of a Federation bomber aircraft as these Russian allied forces moved westward—and as G. Murphy Donovan, a former US intelligence officer, writing for the American Thinker, likewise stated about: “How Russian airstrikes in Syria threaten Turkey is not really much of a mystery. Russians were known to be bombing terrorist oil targets south of the Turk border – too effectively it seems.”

Russian military intelligence analysts in this report have further expounded on this crisis by noting that the priority of Turkey all along was to allow the CIA – in the shadows – to run a “rat line” weaponizing a gaggle of invisible “moderate rebels” in Syria.

Now the CIA is on a mission from God, this report continues, frantically trying to prevent their “rat line” from being definitely smashed by the Syrian Arab Army and YPG on the ground and Russia in the air as the advanced arm of the “4+1” alliance – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – is taking no prisoners trying to re-conquer the key corridors Erdogan has been using to smuggle illegal Syrian and Iraqi through with the help of Islamic State terrorists.

As Turkey confronts Russia, World War III looms ever closer as many are now warning that the West cannot afford the luxury of being principled, as the military bases and aerodromes are far more precious than any proof of Turkey’s involvement in the Islamic State oil business—and with Russia’s deployment of its sophisticated S-400 air defence system in Syria, and the presence of Turkish submarines near the Russian cruiser Moskva, this crisis has now put the world one step away from a full-scale war.

Likewise issuing a World War III warning on this crisis, this report notes, is Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, who recently stated that the chances that President Putin will unleash a nuclear war over Turkey is now “very likely”.

And to fully understand President Putin’s “thoughts/mindset” on this crisis as the world stands on the brink of war, this report says, one only need read the words he spoke yesterday when in mentioning President Erdogan he said: “Apparently Allah decided to punish the ruling clique in Turkey by taking their sanity.”

With Erdogan’s push to create a new Ottoman Empire with Islamic State terrorists “blowing up in its own face”, MoD intelligence analysts in this report further note, President Putin’s staggering retaliations against Turkey now include today’s cancelling of the massive Turkish Stream pipeline project along with a planned total shutdown of all Federation natural gas supplies—and with Turkey being dependent on Russia for 70% of its gas, and only having left a 14-day supply, Erdogan, nevertheless, arrogantly replied: “We have not lived with natural gas all our lives… this nation is accustomed to hardship.”

To fully understand what is really “Behind the Curtain” regarding the Middle East, ISIS, Turkey, and the US strategic attempt to reduce Russia’s control over energy to Europe, this report explains, one must start back in 2009 when Qatar proposed a pipeline plan to Syrian leader Assad to send its natural gas to Europe via Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan.

Assad refused it and this has been the entire pretend reason why the Obama regime wanted to invade Syria. The reason for the refusal was to protect the interests of Assad’s long-time ally, Russia, which is Europe’s biggest natural gas supplier based upon all the data.

It was just one year after Qatar’s proposal, that Assad began negotiations for another pipeline plan with Iran, which would carry Iranian gas to Europe across Iraq and Syria.

Russia endorsed this project since it would clearly have more control over gas flow rather than US linked Qatar. This agreement would strategically place control of the gas flow to Europe in Russia’s hands.

Consequently, the Iranian pipeline became a priority for Russia, and since Syria and Russia are working together to block the Qatar pipeline and create the alternative Iranian pipeline, this created the seeds for World War III we are seeing now looming on the horizon.

So clearly, Obama and his EU-Islamic allies have targeted Russia from the outset. In fact, there was a meeting between Obama and Putin at the United Nations where Putin tried to get Obama on side with Syria against the Islamic State—but Obama rejected the proposal.

So when Russian forces entered Syria on 30 September against the Islamic State, this was a ominous event. Russia was not only backing the Assad regime, it was also backing the Iranian pipeline.

So as President Putin battles against a unified team of bandits and Turkish elites who operate in this region to steal oil from their neighbours Iraq and Syria, this report concludes, and as feared Russian air defense systems now are being sent to Iran too, the “murder and mayhem” unleashed by the Obama regime against all of its enemies (Iraq, Libya, Yemen and now Syria) so it can control the world now has the Federation in its sights—but who, unlike those now devastated nations, is not only able, but is now fully prepared to fight back lest Russia too becomes a wasteland too.

ISIS IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SPREADING A FLESH EATING BUG ACROSS SYRIA ACCORDING TO THE KURDISH RED CRESCENT. LEISHMANIASIS CAN BE FATAL IF LEFT UNTREATED AND IS SPREAD BY PARASITES

“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.” Isaiah 17:1 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: LOOKING FOR ALL THE WORLD LIKE A BIBLICAL PLAGUE, LEISHMANIASIS DISEASE IS SPREADING ACROSS SYRIA AS A RESULT OF ALL THE ROTTING CORPSES THAT ISIS IS LEAVING IN IT’S WAKE OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION. MAYBE THIS IS HOW DAMASCUS BECOMES FINALLY A RUINOUS HEAP.

Human rights workers have said that more than 500 cases of Leishmaniasis disease have been reported in Syria over the past 12 months. Dilqash Isa of the Kurdish Red Crescent, said: ‘As a result of abominable acts by ISIS that included the killing of innocent people and dumping their corpses in streets, this is the leading factor behind the rapid spread of Leishmaniasis disease.’

The World Health Organization has complained that the country’s health service has collapsed as a result of the bitter civil war.

A Syrian Kurdish fighter claimed: ‘We did not have knowledge about this deadly disease before. We have been fighting on the battlefield for almost four years and this disease basically generated from embattled areas of Tal Hamis, Hon and Qosa.’

The US State Department tweeted a link to the original story carried on Rudaw.net.

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION HAS WARNED THAT THE CIVIL WAR IN SYRIA IS HAVING A DRAMATIC IMPACT ON THE HEALTH OF THE NATION WITH THE COLLAPSE OF MEDICAL SERVICES.

They claim that 13 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance. According to an official statement: ‘Despite our best efforts, health needs are escalating, and more than four years of crisis is causing the Syrian health system to deteriorate.

‘A cholera outbreak has arisen in neighbouring Iraq – reminding us all that disease outbreaks have a tendency to afflict countries already afflicted by protracted crises.

‘WHO is prepositioning medical supplies and putting preparedness measures in place to forestall potential spread into Syria.’ According to the WHO, 58 per cent of public hospitals in the country were either partially or fully destroyed. source

On Thursday, Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu said the following about Russia’s allegations that Turkey and more specifically, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family, are involved in the trafficking of illegal ISIS crude:

"In the Cold War period there was a Soviet propaganda machine. Every day it created different lies. Firstly they would believe them and then expect the world to believe them. These were remembered as Pravda lies and nonsense. This was an old tradition but it has suddenly reared its head again. Nobody attaches any value to the lies of this Soviet-style propaganda machine.”

As we went on to note, Davutoglu’s assessment isn’t exactly correct. Quite a few people “attach value” to Moscow’s allegations, not the least of which are the authorities in Baghdad, from whom Turkey is effectively stealing not only by facilitating the trafficking of ISIS oil, but also by piping over 600,000 b/d from Kurdistan to Ceyhan.

In fact, Iraq is so agitated that they’re set to ask the Security Council to investigate the situation and brand anyone found to be involved “criminals.”

Of course the thing about being an autocrat - and that’s most certainly what Erdogan is despite the West’s ridiculous contention that Turkey is a democracy - is that you make a whole lot enemies in your own country and while you can suppress dissent with force, eventually it all catches up to you and between Russia’s accusations and opposition political parties still stinging from AKP’s move to nullify June’s election outcome by starting a civil war and calling for snap elections, Erdogan may be in trouble.

Underscoring that contention is CHP lawmaker Eren Erdem who says he, like Moscow, will soon provide proof of Erdogan’s role in the smuggling of Islamic State oil. "I have been able to establish that there is a very high probability that Berat Albayrak is linked to the supply of oil by the Daesh terrorists,” Erdem said at a press conference on Thursday (see more from Sputnik).

Berat Albayrak is Erodan’s son-in-law and is Turkey’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.

Erdem isn’t the only person to mention Albayrak this week. Recall that in his opening remarks at the dramatic Russian MoD presentation on Wednesday Deputy Minister of Defence Anatoly Antonov said the following:

"No one in the West, I wonder, does not cause the issue that the son of the President of Turkey is the leader of one of the largest energy companies, and son-in-appointed Minister of Energy? What a brilliant family business!"

"There is one company, headquartered in Erbil, which in 2012 acquired oil tankers, and which is currently being bombarded by Russian aircraft,” Erdem said. “I am now studying this company's records. It has partners in Turkey, and I am checking them for links to Albayrak."

Note that this is entirely consistent with what we said last week, namely that in some cases, ISIS takes advantage of the Kurdish oil transport routes, connections, and infrastructure in Turkey. It will certainly be interesting to see if there's a connection between Albayrak, the energy ministry, and Bilal Erdogan's BMZ Group.

If you know anything about Erdogan, you know that he doesn’t take kindly to this kind of thing and as Erdem goes on to recount, he’s already been the subject of a smear campaign:

"Today, the Takvim newspaper called me an American puppet, an Israeli agent, a supporter of the [Kurdish] PKK, and the instigator of a coup…all in the same sentence. I am inclined to view this attack on me as an attempt to belittle my significance, to attack my reputation in the eyes in the public, given that my investigation is a real threat to the government. Such a sharply negative reaction suggests that my assumptions are fair, and I am moving in the right direction to find the truth."

The lawmaker says that type of attack has “only convinced [him] further on the need to carry this investigation through to the end."

In the meantime, we can only hope that, for the sake of exposing the truth, “the end” doesn’t end up being a Turkish jail cell, or worse for Erdem.

Russia's defence ministry on Saturday accused the United States of turning a blind eye to the trafficking of oil into Turkey from Syrian areas under Islamic State control, after Washington called the amounts involved insignificant.

"When US officials say they don't see how the terrorists' oil is smuggled to Turkey... it smells badly of a desire to cover up these acts," the ministry said on its Facebook page.

"The declarations of the Pentagon and the State Department seem like a theatre of the absurd," the statement added, suggesting that Washington "watch the videos taken by its (own) drones which have recently been three times as numerous over the Turkey-Syria border and above the oil zones".

US special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs, Amos Hochstein, on Friday said the amount of oil smuggled into Turkey from areas of Syria controlled by the Islamic State group is "of no significance from a volume perspective -- both volume of oil and volume of revenue".

His comments came after Moscow accused Ankara of profiting from the trade.

Russia and Turkey have in recent days traded allegations that they are involved in the illegal trade, further ratcheting up tensions after Turkish jets downed a Russian bomber on the Syrian border.

The State Department has dismissed Moscow's charge against its NATO ally, which directly implicated President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his family in the trade, insisting there is no evidence to support it.

"I don't believe that there is significant smuggling, between ISIL-controlled areas and Turkey of oil in any significance in volume," Hochstein said Friday, using an alternative name for IS.

Instead, US officials told reporters, the oil pumped in eastern Syria is refined in ad hoc desert pits equipped with crude stills and sold on the war zone black-market within Syria and neighbouring Iraq.

Allied officials estimated the IS group's income from oil at $1.0 million to $1.5 million per day, but hope that renewed US, British and French air strikes have cut that.

Turkish Foreign Ministry on Monday received explanations from Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov over an incident involving a Russian sailor who allegedly held a man-portable air defense system on his shoulder when his warship was sailing through the Bosphorus, a diplomatic source said.

The ministry expressed the hope that no such incidents, which contradicted the letter and spirit of international laws and the Montreux Convention, would recur in future. The source also said that the Russian side had promised to convey in full measure the official stance of the Turkish Foreign Ministry to the Russian agencies concerned.

The Russian embassy in Turkey confirms that Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov has been summoned to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the embassy’s spokesman, Igor Mityakov, told TASS on Monday.

"We confirm that a meeting has taken place. The ambassador met department head Burak Ozugergin (responsible for political, maritime, aviation and border affairs). We are not giving any comments on the content of their conversation," the spokesperson said.

A photograph of allegedly Russian sailor who was standing on the deck of a Russian warship with a man-portable air defense system on his shoulder appeared in Turkish newspapers last Sunday. The Turkish side described the incident as an "open provocation.".

The Turkish Army concentrated its major forces on the border with Syria

Turkey’s Air Force conducted an operation on patrolling the Turkish-Syrian border, the country’s general staff said on Monday.

"Twelve F-16 jets carried out patrol flights along the Turkish-Syrian border," the statement said. The operation was conducted on December 6.

Three military boats and a mobile radar also fulfilled the task of controlling the Turkish-Syrian border from the sea.

Since November 24, when the Turkish fighter jets downed Russia’s Su-24M bomber in Syria near the border with Turkey, the activity of Turkey’s Air Force in the near-border area decreased, and there were no reports on the trans-border strikes against the Islamic State in Syria.

The Turkish Army concentrated its major forces on the border with Syria. The mobilization of military units to these regions began around three years ago when trans-border threats increased.

Ankara earlier said it was preparing for a major Air Force operation against the IS jointly with the US.

Damascus has labelled as an “act of aggression” the US-led coalition’s missile strike which killed three Syrian soldiers at an army base in the Deir ez Zor province.

On top of the fatalities, 13 personnel were injured and a number of military vehicles were destroyed when warplanes fired nine missiles at the Saeqa military camp.

The incident is the first of its kind since the coalition started to bomb Syrian territory more than a year ago, though the US-led alliance continues to deny it carried out the airstrike.

“Syria strongly condemns the act of aggression by the US-led coalition that contradicts the UN Charter on goals and principles. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent letters to the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council,” Syria's SANA news agency quoted the country's foreign ministry as saying.

Coalition spokesman Colonel Steve Warren has insisted, however, that the only airstrikes in the area were delivered some 55km away.

“We’ve seen those Syrian reports but we did not conduct any strikes in that part of Deir ez Zor yesterday. So we see no evidence,” he said.

A US military official speaking on condition of anonymity told Reuters that Washington is certain that Russia is responsible for the airstrike.

The Deir ez Zor province is situated in eastern Syria, and is largely controlled by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The region is of significant strategic importance to the terrorist group, as it contains a number of oilfields, which are a major source of revenue for IS.

On November 24 a Turkish Air Force F-16 jet shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber over Syria. Ankara claims the Russian plane briefly crossed into Turkish airspace. One of the Russian pilots was killed by Syrian rebels as he ejected from the stricken plane, while the other was rescued in a swift operation during which one Russian serviceman was killed.

The downing of the bomber by Turkey came after a successful Russian bombing campaign against ISIS oil infrastructure on the Syria-Turkish border, and was seen as revenge. Putin described the act as "a stab in the back" and accused Erdogan of benefiting from the illegal oil trade with IS and financing the terrorists.

Russia has been conducting airstrikes targeting IS and other terrorist groups in Syria since September 30. The strikes were launched after a formal request from Damascus. Russian jets have been carrying out sorties from Moscow’s Khmeimim Air Base in Latakia.

The US-led coalition’s airstrikes in Syria are in fact illegal, as it has never received permission from Syrian President Bashar Assad to enter the country’s airspace. In response to the UK’s decision to join the bombing campaign in Syria, Assad reiterated in an interview with the Sunday Times that the presence of Britain in Syria is unlawful as neither Damascus nor the United Nations have given London the green light to bomb Syrian territory.

“It will be harmful and illegal and it will support terrorism, as happened after the coalition started its operation a year or so [ago], because this is like a cancer,” Assad said.

Russia has deployed attack and transport helicopters to reinforce its military base in Armenia, RIA news agency quoted Russian Defence Ministry as saying on Tuesday.

A total of seven helicopters MI-24 and Mi-8 have been deployed at the base near the capital city of Yerevan, and one more batch would be delivered to the base before the year end, the ministry was quoted as saying.

The air base was set up in 1995 and since 1998 Russia has been stationing there fighter jets MIG-29.

Russia also has a military base in Gyumri, the second largest city in Armenia in the northwestern part of the country close to the Armenian-Turkish border.

Earlier today, in a clear advance notice to the French and US navies which are both set to arrive just off the coast of Syria in the coming weeks, Russia for the first time targeted Islamic State targets in Syria with Kalibr land-attack cruise missiles launched from a submarine in the Mediterranean Sea off the Syrian coastline, according to Russia’s Defense Minister.

According to RT, the 3M-54 Kalibr missiles were launched from the Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine “Rostov-on-Don”, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

While as reported here before, Russian warships based in the Caspian and Mediterranean seas had launched similar missiles targeting ISIS positions in late November, this was the first time that Russia has targeted IS in Syria from a submarine.

The submarine cruise missile launch and subsequent strikes are shown in the clip below:

According to a Kremlin transcript of the conversation, Shoigu told Putin that the missiles successfully targeted two major terrorist positions in the territory of Raqqa, adding that “we can say with absolute confidence that significant damage has been inflicted upon ammunition warehouses and a mine production plant, as well as the oil infrastructure."

In addition to the submarine, a Russian Ministry of Defense source revealed that the Rostov-on-Don, equipped with modern Russian Kalibr cruise missiles, had appeared near the Syrian coast. Additionally, just before the USS Harry S. Truman carrier arrives, the Russian cruiser Varyag, which is currently off India’s coast for Exercise Indra till Dec. 12, will set sail for the Mediterranean to replace the cruiser Moskva.

However, what was most notable in today's update by the Russian defense ministry was neither the news about the sub, or the second ship deployment, but what Putin told Shoigu during their conversation according to the Kremlin's transcript. Which is as follows:

Regarding the submarine strikes we must, of course, analyze everything that happens on the battlefield, how the weapons acts. Both the "Kalibrs" and the X-101 rockets as a whole proved to be very good. This new, modern, highly efficient, and highly precise weapon can be equipped with both a conventional warhead as well as a special, nuclear warhead. Naturally, in the fight against terrorism that is unnecessary, and I hope there will be no need [to use nukes against the Islamic State].

But, if it is.... which of course was the unsaid message: Russia not only can deploy tactical nuclear warheads to Syria overnight, but it may, "not now", but eventually be forced to use them against "the Islamic State."

And just like that Putin hinted that the Syrian proxy war, as it escalates ever wider and drags in increasingly more countries in true "world war" fashion, may just have one or more mushroom clouds in its near future; clouds which will will target none other than the CIA's pet project designed to take down Assad - the Islamic State. We are not sure if this particular cloud will have a silver lining, but we are confident that not even Turkey will want to buy ISIS oil if it happens to have the same radioactivity profile as Fukushima.

Putin Orders Military To "Immediately Destroy" Any Threat To Russian Forces

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ratcheted up the rhetoric in what appears to be one step closer to the potential for direct conflict with The West. While not detailing 'who' he was focued on, amid the obvious Turkey-Russia tensions, Putin told a session of the Defense Ministry's collegium that "I order to act extremely tough. Any targets that threaten Russian forces or our infrastructure on the ground should be immediately destroyed."

During the meeting of the most senior defense officials, ITAR TASS reports that Putin also warned against "those who will again try to organize any provocations against our servicemen."

"We have already taken additional measures to ensure security of Russian servicemen and air base. It was strengthened by new aviation groups and missile defense systems. Strike aircraft will now carry out operations under cover of fighter jets,"Putin said that the Russian military have caused a substantial damage to terrorists in Syria, adding that the actions of the Russian Armed Forces are worthy of praise.

"The combined operation of the Aerospace Defence Forces and the Navy, the use of newest high precision weapons systems has caused a serious damage to the terrorist infrastructure, thus qualitatively changing the situation in Syria," the president said.The president also ordered the defense ministry to coordinate actions in Syria with Israel’s command post and the US-led international coalition.

"It’s important to develop cooperation with all countries really interested in destroying terrorists. I am talking about contacts on ensuring flight safety with the command post of Israel’s air force and forces of the US-led coalition," Putin said.According to the official, terrorists in Syria pose a direct threat to Russia and Moscow’s actions are carried out to protect the country rather than due to abstract interests.

"Our soldiers in Syria are, first and foremost, defending their country. Our actions there aren’t motivated by some obscure and abstract geopolitical interests or a desire to train our forces and test new weapons – which is of course an important goal as well. Our main objective is to avert a threat to the Russian Federation,"As we noted previously, The Kremlin looks prepared not only to stay the course, but to ramp up the deployment. Not only is Moscow hitting terrorist targets with cruise missiles from Russia’s Caspian Fleet, but now, Moscow is shooting at ISIS from a submarine in what can only be described as an effort by Putin to use Syria as a testing ground for Russia’s long dormant military juggernaut (after all, you don’t really need to shoot at a group that doesn’t have an air force or a navy from a sub).

On that note, we present the following update graphic prepared by Louis Martin-Vézian of CIGeography as post at The Aviationst. It documents the scope of Russia’s operation in the Mid-East and should give you an idea of just how committed Moscow is to the fight.